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Abel Sanchez says that despite the dislike that GGG has for Alvarez at this point, that those feelings won't distract him from the task at hand Saturday night.

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Written BySteven Muehlhausen

One of the biggest storylines heading into Saturday night's
rematch between former middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez and
unified champion Gennady Golovkin is how much disdain both sides
have for each other.

Going into last September's fight, a ton of mutual respect was
shown by Alvarez and Golovkin. That changed when Alvarez failed two
drug tests in February for clenbuterol, thus postponing their
original rematch date of May 5. Golovkin and his team have called
Alvarez a cheater and said that he took the drug intentionally.
They also put the blame on Alvarez for what they perceived as him
running and not engaging in a "Mexican style" way of fighting during the
first fight. Alvarez blamed the positive results on contaminated
meat and insisted that he would never take PEDs.

Since then, he has been highly agitated anytime he hears what
Golovkin has said about him, debunking the story of GGG's team about the way
he fought.

It has gotten to the point in which Alvarez and Golovkin haven't
been around each other since the beginning of 2018 to promote the
May 5 date. Each side refused to do a joint press conference to
promote the Sept. 15 date and did separate media workouts at the
end of August without even posing for a traditional staredown, even
though both fighters were in the same facility.

That being said, emotions are at an all-time high and one would
understand if Alvarez and Golovkin fought with their hearts instead
of their heads in this middleweight title clash.

But that's not going to happen, Golovkin's trainer Abel Sanchez
said.

"Emotions will never get in the way," Sanchez told Sporting
News. "Emotions get in the way when the questions are asked. Once
they step through the ropes, once we're in the dressing room, all
those things are not going to be asked. All those things are on the
back burner. We are concentrating on the task at hand. Gennady is a
professional, as Canelo is, and I'm sure when they step through the
ropes, it'll be about that fight. Those other thoughts and those
other questions will not be on their mind, as they will not be on
mine, either. I've got a job to do that night, and I'm going to do
it regardless of what happened in the past. But when those
questions are asked, it's difficult to act like it never
happened."

Any time Golovkin and Sanchez get asked about Alvarez failing
those drug tests, you can hear the hostility in their voices.
Sanchez feels if Alvarez and his team would just admit he was
taking clenbuterol to attempt to gain an advantage in the rematch
that they wouldn't be as upset about the matter.

Putting all the drama that's been the central focus of the
rematch aside, the fact of the matter is Alvarez and Golovkin are
going to meet in the center of the ring on Saturday night. When it
comes to adjustments his star pupil needs to make heading into the
biggest fight of his career, Sanchez feels at this stage of the
36-year-old's career, it's more about what's upstairs than anything
else.

"Well, I think at this level, maturity and amount of fights, the
improvements are minimal," Sanchez said. "The improvements are a
lot of times more mental than they are physical, but how you
approach a fight mentally, it's just as important as the little
improvements that we had. I think when you get to this level and
when you get to this stage in their careers, it's hoping that
everything goes right in the gym, hoping that there's no
controversy and hoping that everything is 100 percent in the
training camp. And you go into a fight with a different mode."

Sanchez added: "He goes into a fight that, as he said, he wants
to punish Canelo and he has a thought in his mind what he wants to
do to him. We train hard and we prepare just like we did for the
first one, but the mental aspect of it is the most important at
this stage."